MUNCIE, Ind. -- Nearly 140 of Indiana's best student band and choral musicians preview their two-week European concert tour in a June 15 performance at Ball State University.

The free concert by the Indiana's Ambassadors of Music symphonic band and concert choir includes patriotic, spiritual, jazzy and traditional tunes at 7 p.m. in Pruis Hall.

Together the elite ensembles feature high school and college students selected from around the state. The band-choir program is coordinated by Ball State's School of Music, College of Fine Arts, in conjunction with Voyageurs International, which sponsors music ambassador groups in 33 states.

Participants rehearse on campus June 13-15, leave for Europe on June 16 and perform in England, France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany through June 30.

Concert venues include London's Westminster Cathedral; Paris' Luxembourg Gardens on French National Music Day; Champery, Switzerland; Seefeld, Austria; and Rothenburg, Germany. Students will also visit Venice, Italy, and small Austrian, Swiss and Bavarian villages.

The band and choir tour every two years. When founded in 1996, the ensembles were officially recognized as ambassadors by then Gov. Evan Bayh and the Indiana Legislature.

"It's an all-star group that represents all parts of the state," said Joseph Scagnoli, Ball State's band director and the founder/music director of the Indiana's Ambassadors of Music. "The quality and motivation of the students is very high."

The 80 symphonic band members and 60 concert choir members were chosen from nearly 2,000 top student musicians nominated by band and choir directors statewide. Selected students excel in musicianship, citizenship, moral character and leadership.

Most performers are high school students, while others are from Ball State, Indiana, Purdue and Northwestern universities and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Participants can earn college credit in music performance and music history.

Scagnoli conducts the symphonic band, and the concert choir's conductor is Joseph Barnard, Lafayette Harrison High School choral director and Indiana Music Educators Association president-elect.

Other Ambassadors staff members are band and choral directors from Columbus North, Fort Wayne Snider, Greenfield Central, Lafayette Harrison, Lawrence North (Indianapolis), Manchester, North Central (Farmersburg), Seymour, Tri (Straughn), Warren Central (Indianapolis) and Wood Memorial (Oakland City) high schools and Thomkins Middle School (Evansville).

On campus and on tour, the band and choir perform together on "America the Beautiful," John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" and George Gershwin/Robert Russell Bennett's "Gershwin."

Choir repertoire also includes Duke Ellington and Alice Parker's "Come Sunday," George Gershwin and Pete King's "Clap Yo Hands," and "Ave Maria" works by Franz Biebl and Victoria, plus "Shenandoah," "Deep River," "Soon Ah Will Be Done," "Swing Low," "Poor Man Lazarus" and "I Want Jesus to Walk With Me."

The band plays numbers such as a Henry Mancini/John Warrington concert band medley, the Sousa tune "I've Made My Plans for the Summer," Leroy Anderson's "The Rakes of Mallow," Alfred Reed's "Alleluia! Laudamus Te" and Robert W. Smith's "Covenant." Other selections feature the trombone section and Ball State senior percussion soloist Joseph Scagnoli Jr.

Band repertoire also includes Cole Porter and John Krance's "Night and Day," Karl L. King's "Huntress March," Clare Grundman's "Fantasy on American Sailing Songs" and Claude T. Smith's "Overture on an Early American Folk Hymn."